The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Maurizio Cattelan The Last Word Seven-Hour FinaleSaturday, January 21, 6 pm, to Sunday, January 22, 1 am in the Peter B. Lewis Theatre, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
On the occasion of Maurizio Cattelan’s announcement of his retirement from art making, the Guggenheim is marking the closing of the Maurizio Cattelan: All exhibition by organizing a multidisciplinary program called The Last Word, during which thirty or so prominent representatives from the fields of visual art, philosophy, literature, film, music, economics, law, politics and activism, religion, dance, theater, sports, and fashion will come together to contemplate the subject of voluntary endings.
Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once comedic and profound. Although an ironic humor threads through much of his work, an examination of mortality forms the core of Cattelan’s practice. The exhibition brings together virtually everything the artist has produced since 1989 and presents the works en masse, strung seemingly haphazardly from the ceiling of the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. Hoisted by rope as if on a gallows, the suspended objects explicitly reveal the undertone of death that pervades the artist’s work. More than just a powerful culmination of a career, this exhibition signifies its end. With the opening of Maurizio Cattelan: All, Cattelan announced his retirement from the art world, although what this means precisely remains to be seen.
The Last Word seeks to tackle with equal levity that most difficult moment: to decide when to stop one thing and begin another or to end it altogether. More than just some winter morbidity, less strenuous than a long-distance race, and much more than a quick sprint, this event will be a meditative seven-hour jog around life’s Central Park of pleasures, desires, and regrets.
Participants include Aquila Theatre, Robert Boyd, Doryun Chong, Drew Daniel, Arthur Danto, Tracey Emin, Marc Etkind, Amy Hollywood, Stewart Home, Tehching Hsieh, Harmony Korine and Proenza Schoeler, Thomas Lawson, David Lipsky, Courtney Love, Adam McEwen, Rick Moody, Sina Najafi, Francis Naumann, Not An Alternative (Beka Economopoulos and Jason Jones), Michael Rush, Virginia Rutledge, Mark C. Taylor, George Vecsey, Jamieson Webster, Donelle Woolford, and many more.
Co-organized by Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, the New School for Social Research, and Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and curator of Maurizio Cattelan: All.
Admission is pay what you wish. Cash bar after 8 pm.
Maurizio Cattelan: All will remain on view for program attendees.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
5th Ave at 89th St
New York City
guggenheim.org/publicprograms
